Saturday, March 07, 2009

My maturing sense of smell

I hung some laundry on the line today. I don't have enough line space to hang much at a time so I usually leave the clothes for the dryer because it doesn't matter so much when they smell delicious and they're kind of uncomfortable when they feel like a board when we've grown used to them being soft.

As soon as the weather is nice enough to hang laundry outside (even if it's a warmer/breezier day in the winter) I immediately throw the blankets and sheets through the washer. When I bring them in off the line, I bury my face in them for 5 minutes to inhale their goodness. Then I make everyone else in the house stick their noses in, too. Then I spend a half hour walking on air with a ditzy smile on my face because I'm high on the smell of fresh.

When I was a kid, we hung miles of laundry on the line. And by "we" I do mean I had a big hand in that chore. For some reason, I forget how much I hated that now that I'm an adult and am making the choice for myself - plus there's not so much line to fill at any one time.

I sucked my thumb (and index finger) until I was 9 years old. My blankie was my lifeline. It smelled delicious in a different sort of way. My mom says it smelled like grunge but I prefer to think that it smelled of love. Love doesn't always smell of fresh air, though, and I HATED the smell of my blanket after my mom washed it. I tried desperately to not let her wash it and especially not hang it on the line.

I think that if I smelled that blanket now, as an adult, I'd think that it smelled good because my brain would remember. But I can't, for the life of me, imagine why anything could smell better than a blanket dried on the line.